ITALY (continued 3)

Well! the ladies, who never hardly dine at all, rise about seven in the evening, when the gentlemen are just got ready to attend them; and sit sipping their chocolate on a chair at the coffee-house door with great tranquillity, chatting over the common topics of the times: nor do they appear half so shy of each other as the Milanese ladies, who seldom seem to have any pleasure in the soft converse of a female friend. But though certainly no women can be more charming than these Venetian dames, they have forgotten the old mythological fable, that the youngest of the Graces was married to Sleep. By which it was intended we should consider that state as necessary to the reparation not only of beauty but of youth, and every power of pleasing.

There are men here however who, because they are not quite in the gay world, keep themselves awake whole nights at study; and much has been told me, of a collection of books belonging to a private scholar, Pinelli, who goes very little out, as worthy attentive examination.

All literary topics are pleasingly discussed at Quirini's Casino, where every thing may be learned by the conversation of the company, as Doctor Johnson said of his literary Club; but more agreeably, because women are always half the number of persons admitted here.

One evening our society was amused by the entrance of a foreign nobleman, exactly what we should in London emphatically call a Character,—learned, loud, and overbearing; though of a carriage that impressed great esteem. I have not often listened to so well-furnished a talker; nor one more capable of giving great information. He had seen the Pyramids of Egypt, he told us; had climbed Mount Horeb, and visited Damascus; but possessed the art of detaining our attention more on himself, than on the things or places he harangued about; for conversation that can scarcely be called, where one man holds the company suspended on his account of matters pompously though instructively related. He staid here a very little while among us; is a native of France, a grandee of Spain, a man of uncommon talents, and a traveller. I should be sorry never to meet him more.

The Abate Arteaga, a Spanish ecclesiastic of the same agreeable coterie, seemed of a very different and far more pleasing character;—full of general knowledge, eminent in particular scholarship, elegant in his sentiments, and sound in his learning. I liked his company exceedingly, and respected his opinions.

Zingarelli, the great musical composer, was another occasional member of this charming society: his wit and repartie are famous, and his bons mots are repeated wherever one runs to. I cannot translate any of them, but will write one down, which will make such of my readers laugh as understand Italian.—The Emperor was at Milan, and asked Zingarelli his opinion of a favourite singer? "Io penso maestà che non è cattivo suddito del principi," replied the master, "quantunque farà gran nemico di giove." "How so?" enquired the King.—"Maestà," answered our lively Neapolitan, "ella sà naturalmente che Giove tuona, ma questo stuona." This we see at once was humour not wit; and sallies of humour are scarcely ever capable of translation.

An odd thing to which I was this morning witness, has called my thoughts away to a curious train of reflections upon the animal race; and how far they may be made companionable and intelligent. The famous Ferdinand Bertoni, so well known in London by his long residence among us, and from the undisputed merit of his compositions, now inhabits this his native city, and being fond of dumb creatures, as we call them, took to petting a pigeon, one of the few animals which can live at Venice, where, as I observed, scarcely any quadrupeds can be admitted, or would exist with any degree of comfort to themselves. This creature has, however, by keeping his master company, I trust, obtained so perfect an ear and taste for music, that no one who sees his behaviour, can doubt for a moment of the pleasure he takes in hearing Mr. Bertoni play and sing: for as soon as he sits down to the instrument, Columbo begins shaking his wings, perches on the piano-forte, and expresses the most indubitable emotions of delight. If however he or any one else strike a note false, or make any kind of discord upon the keys, the dove never fails to shew evident tokens of anger and distress; and if teized too long, grows quite enraged; pecking the offender's legs and fingers in such a manner, as to leave nothing less doubtful than the sincerity of his resentment. Signora Cecilia Giuliani, a scholar of Bertoni's, who has received some overtures from the London theatre lately, will, if she ever arrives there, bear testimony to the truth of an assertion very difficult to believe, and to which I should hardly myself give credit, were I not witness to it every morning that I chuse to call and confirm my own belief. A friend present protested he should feel afraid to touch the harpsichord before so nice a critic; and though we all laughed at the assertion, Bertoni declared he never knew the bird's judgment fail; and that he often kept him out of the room, for fear of his affronting of tormenting those who came to take musical instructions. With regard to other actions of life, I saw nothing particular in the pigeon, but his tameness, and strong attachment to his master: for though never winged, and only clipped a very little, he never seeks to range away from the house or quit his master's service, any more than the dove of Anacreon:

All the difficulty will be indeed for us other two-legged creatures to leave the sweet societies of charming Venice; but they begin to grow fatiguing now, as the weather increases in warmth.

I do think the Turkish sailor gave an admirable account of a carnival, when he told his Mahometan friends at his return, That those poor Christians were all disordered in their senses, and nearly in a state of actual madness, while he remained among them, till one day, on a sudden, they luckily found out a certain grey powder that cured such symptoms; and laying it on their heads one Wednesday morning, the wits of all the inhabitants were happily restored at a stroke: the people grew sober, quiet, and composed; and went about their business just like other folks. He meant the ashes strewed on the heads of all one meets in the streets through many a Catholic country; when all masquerading, money-making, &c. subside for forty days, and give, from the force of the contrast, a greater appearance of devotion and decorous behaviour in Venice, than almost any where else during Lent.

I do not for my own part think well of all that violence, that strong light and shadow in matters of religion; which requires rather an even tenour of good works, proceeding from sound faith, than any of these staring testimonials of repentance, as if it were a work to be done once a year only. But neither do I think any Christian has a right to condemn another for his opinions or practice; when St. Paul expressly says, that "One man esteemeth one day above another, another man esteemeth every day alike; let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. But who art thou, that judgest another man's servant?[Romans, chap. xiv.]"

The Venetians, to confess the truth, are not quite so strenuously bent on the unattainable felicity of finding every man in the same mind, as others of the Italians are; and one great reason why they are more gay and less malignant, have fewer strong prejudices than others of their countrymen, is merely because they are happier. Most of the second rank, and I believe all of the first rank among them, have some share in governing the rest; it is therefore necessary to exclude ignorance, and natural to encourage social pleasures. Each individual feels his own importance, and scorns to contribute to the degradation of the whole, by indulging a gross depravity of manners, or at least of principles. Every person listed one degree from the lowest, finds it his interest as well as duty to love his country, and lend his little support to the general fabric of a state they all know how to respect; while the very vulgar willingly perform the condition exacted, and punctually pay obedience for protection. They have an unlimited confidence in their rulers, who live amongst them; and can desire only their utmost good. How they are governed, comes seldom into their heads to enquire; "Che ne pensa lù[Let him look to that]," says a low Venetian, if you ask him, and humourously points at a Clarissimo passing by while you talk. They have indeed all the reason to be certain, that where the power is divided among such numbers, one will be sure to counteract another if mischief towards the whole be intended.

Of all aristocracies surely this is the most rationally and happily, as well as most respectably founded; for though one's heart revolts against the names of Baron and Vassal, while the petty tyrants live scattered far from each other, as in Poland, Russia, and many parts of Germany, like lions in the desert, or eagles in the rock, secure in their distance from equals or superiors; yet here at Venice, where every nobleman is a baron, and all together inhabit one city, no subject can suffer from the tyranny of the rest, though all may benefit from the general protection: as each is separately in awe of his neighbour, and desires to secure his client's tenderness by indulgence, instead of wishing to disgust him by oppression: unlike the state so powerfully delineated by our incomparable poet in his Paulina,

And it is, I trust, for no deeper reason that the subjects of this republic resident in the capital, are less savage and more happy than those who live upon the Terra Firma; where many outrages are still committed, disgraceful to the state, from the mere facility offenders find, either in escaping to the dominion of other princes, or of finding shelter at home from the madly-bestowed protection these old barons on the Continent cease not yet to give, to ruffians who profess their service, and acknowledge dependence upon them. In the town, however, little is known of these enormities, and less is talked on; and what information has come to my ears of the murders done at Brescia and Bergamo, was given me at Milan; where Blainville's accounts of that country, though written so long ago, did not fail to receive confirmation from the lips of those who knew perfectly well what they were talking about. And I am told that Labbia, Giovanni Labbia, the new Podestà sent to Brescia, has worked wonderful reformation among the inhabitants of that territory; where I am ashamed to relate the computation of subjects lost to the state, by being killed in cold blood during the years 1780 and 1781.

The following sonnet, addressed to the new Magistrate, by the elegant and learned Abbé Bettolini, will entertain such of my readers as understand Italian:

Imitation.

From these verses, written by a native of Brescia, one may see how matters stood there very, very little while ago: but here at Venice the people are of a particularly sweet and gentle disposition, good-humoured with each other, and kind to strangers; little disposed to public affrays (which would indeed be punished and put a sudden end to in an instant), nor yet to any secret or hidden treachery. They watch the hour of a Regatta with impatience, to make some merit with the woman of their choice, and boast of their families who have won in the manly contest forty or fifty years ago, perhaps when honoured with the badge and livery of some noble house; for here almost every thing is hereditary, as in England almost every thing is elective; nor had I an idea how much state affairs influence the private life of individuals in a country, till I left trusting to books, and looked a little about me. The low Venetian, however, knows that he works for the commonwealth, and is happy; for things go round, says he, Il Turco magna St. Marco; St. Marco magna mi, mi magna ti, e ti tu magna un'altro[S].

Apropos to this custom of calling Venice (when they speak of it) San Marco; I heard so comical a story yesterday that I cannot refuse the pleasure of inserting it; and if my readers do not find it as pleasant as I did, they may certainly leave it out, without the smallest prejudice either to the book, the author, or themselves.

The procurator Tron was at Padua, it seems, and had a fancy to drive forward to Vicenza that afternoon, but being particularly fond of a favourite pair of horses which drew his chariot that day, would by no means venture if it happened to rain; and took the trouble to enquire of Abate Toaldo, "Whether he thought such a thing likely to happen, from the appearance of the sky?" The professor, not knowing why the question was asked, said, "he rather thought it would not rain for four hours at most." In consequence of this information our senator ordered his equipage directly, got into it, and bid the driver make haste to Vicenza: but before he was half-way on his journey, such torrents came down from a black cloud that burst directly over their heads, that his horses were drenched in wet, and their mortified master turned immediately back to Padua, that they might suffer no further inconvenience. To pass away the evening, which he did not mean to have spent there, and to quiet his agitated spirits by thinking on something else, he walked under the Portico to a neighbouring coffee-house, where fate the Abate Toaldo in company of a few friends; wholly unconscious that he had been the cause of vexing the Procuratore; who, after a short pause, cried out, in a true Venetian spirit of anger and humour oddly blended together, "Mi dica Signor Professore Toaldo, chi è il più gran minchion di tutti i fanti in Paradiso?" Pray tell me Doctor (we should say), who is the greatest blockhead among all the saints of Heaven? The Abbé looked astonished, but hearing the question repeated in a more peevish accent still, replied gravely, "Eccelenza non fon fatto io per rispondere a tale dimande"—My lord, I have no answer ready for such extraordinary questions. Why then, replies the Procuratore Tron, I will answer this question myself.—St. Marco ved'ella—"e'l vero minchion: mentre mantiene tanti professori per studiare (che so to mi) delle stelle; roba astronomica che non vale un fico; è loro non sanno dirli nemmeno s'hà da piovere o nò."—"Why it is St. Mark, do you see, that is the true blockhead and dupe, in keeping so many professors to study the stars and stuff; when with all their astronomy they cannot tell him whether it will rain or no."

Well, pax tibi, Marce! I see that I have said more about Venice, where I have lived five weeks, than about Milan, where I stayed five months; but

Si placeat varios hominum cognoscere vultus, Area longa patet, sancto contermina Marco, Celsus ubi Adriacas, Venetus Leo despicit undas, Hic circum gentes cunctis e partibus orbis, Æthiopes, Turcos, Slavos, Arabésque, Syrósque, Inveniésque Cypri, Cretæ, Macedumque colonos, Innumerósque alios varia regione profectos: Sæpe etiam nec visa prius, nec cognita cernes, Quæ si cuncta velim tenui describere versu, Heic omnes citiùs nautas celeresque Phaselos, Et simul Adriaci pisces numerabo profundi.

Imitated loosely.

If change of faces please your roving sight, Or various characters your mind delight, To gay St. Mark's with eagerness repair; For curiosity may pasture there. Venetia's lion bending o'er the waves, There sees reflected—tyrants, freemen, slaves. The swarthy Moor, the soft Circassian dame, The British sailor not unknown to fame; Innumerous nations crowd the lofty door, Innumerous footsteps print the sandy shore; While verse might easier name the scaly tribe, That in her seas their nourishment imbibe, Than Venice and her various charms describe. } } }

It is really pity ever to quit the sweet seducements of a place so pleasing; which attracts the inclination and flatters the vanity of one, who, like myself, has received the most polite attentions, and been diverted with every amusement that could be devised. Kind, friendly, lovely Venetians! who appear to feel real fondness for the inhabitants of Great Britain, while Cavalier Pindemonte writes such verses in its praise. Yet must the journey go forward, no staying to pick every flower upon the road.

On Saturday next then am I to forsake—but I hope not for ever—this gay, this gallant city, so often described, so certainly admired; seen with rapture, quitted with regret: seat of enchantment! head-quarters of pleasure, farewell!

It was on the twenty-first of May then that we returned up the Brenta in a barge to Padua, stopping from time to time to give refreshment to our conductors and their horse, which draws on the side, as one sees them at Richmond; where the banks are scarcely more beautifully adorned by art, than here by nature; though the Brenta is a much narrower river than the Thames at Richmond, and its villas, so justly celebrated, far less frequent. The sublimity of their architecture however, the magnificence of their orangeries, the happy construction of the cool arcades, and general air of festivity which breathes upon the banks of this truly wizard stream, planted with dancing, not weeping willows, to which on a bright evening the lads and lasses run for shelter from the sun beams,

are I suppose peculiar to itself, and best described by Monsieur de Voltaire, whose Pococurante the Venetian senator in Candide that possesses all delights in his villa upon the banks of the Brenta, is a very lively portrait, and would be natural too; but that Voltaire, as a Frenchman, could not forbear making his character speak in a very unItalian manner, boasting of his felicity in a style they never use, for they are really no puffers, no vaunters of that which they possess; make no disgraceful comparisons between their own rarities and the want of them in other countries, nor offend you as the French do, with false pity and hateful consolations.

If any thing in England seem to excite their wonder and ill-placed compassion, it is our coal fires, which they persist in thinking strangely unwholesome—and a melancholy proof that we are grievously devoid of wood, before we can prevail upon ourselves to dig the bowels of old earth for fewel, at the hazard of our precious health, if not of its certain loss; nor could I convince the wisest man I tried at, that wood burned to chark is a real poison, while it would be difficult by any process of chemistry to force much evil out of coal. They are steadily of opinion, that consumptions are occasioned by these fires, and that all the subjects of Great Britain are consumptively disposed, merely because those who are so, go into Italy for change of air: though I never heard that the wood smoke helped their breath, or a brazierfull of ashes under the table their appetite. Mean time, whoever seeks to convince instead of persuade an Italian, will find he has been employed in a Sisyphean labour; the stone may roll to the top, but is sure to return, and rest at his feet who had courage to try the experiment. Logic is a science they love not, and I think steadily refuse to cultivate; nor is argument a style of conversation they naturally affect—as Lady Macbeth says, "Question enrageth him;" and the dialogues of Socrates would to them be as disgusting as the violence of Xantippe.

Well, here we are at Padua again! where I will run, and see once more the places I was before so pleased with. The beautiful church of Santa Giustina, the ancient church adorned by Cimabue, Giotto, &c. where you fancy yourself on a sudden transported to Dante's Paradiso, and with for Barry the painter, to point your admiration of its sublime and extraordinary merits; but not the shrine of St. Anthony, or the tomb of Antenor, one rich with gold, the other venerable with rust, can keep my attention fixed on them, while an Italian May offers to every sense, the sweets of nature in elegant perfection. One view of a smiling landschape, lively in verdure, enamelled with flowers, and exhilarating with the sound of music under every tree,

drives Palladio and Sansovino from one's head; and leaves nothing very strongly impressed upon one's heart but the recollection of kindness received and esteem reciprocated. Those pleasures have indeed pursued me hither; the amiable Countess Ferris has not forgotten us; her attentions are numerous, tender, and polite. I went to the play with her, where I was unlucky enough to miss the representation of Romeo and Juliet, which was acted the night before with great applause, under the name of Tragedia Veronese. Monsieur de Voltaire was then premature in his declarations, that Shakespear was unknown, or known only to be censured, except in his native country. Count Kinigl at Milan took occasion to tell me that they acted Hamlet and Lear when he was last at Vienna; and I know not how it is, but to an English traveller each place presents ideas originally suggested by Shakespear, of whom nature and truth are the perpetual mirrors: other authors remind one of things which one has seen in life—but the scenes of life itself remind one of Shakespear. When I first looked on the Rialto, with what immediate images did it supply me? Oh, the old long-cherished images of the pensive merchant, the generous friend, the gay companion, and their final triumph over the practices of a cruel Jew. Anthonio, Gratiano, met me at every turn; and when I confessed some of these feelings before the professor of natural history here, who had spent some time in London; he observed, that no native of our island could sit three hours, and not speak of Shakespear: he added many kind expressions of partial liking to our nation, and our poets: and l'Abate Cesarotti good-humouredly confessed his little skill in the English language when he translated their so much-admired Ossian; but he had studied it pretty hard since, he said, and his version of Gray's Elegy is charming.

Gray and Young are the favourite writers among us, as far as I have yet heard them talked over upon the continent; the first has secured them by his residence at Florence, and his Latin verses I believe; the second, by his piety and brilliant thoughts. Even Romanists are disposed to think dear Dr. Young very near to Christianity—an idea which must either make one laugh or cry, while

But I must tell what I have been seeing at the theatre, and should tell it much better had not the charms of Countess Ferris's conversation engaged my mind, which would otherwise perhaps have been more seized on than it was, by the sight of an old pantomime, or wretched farce (for there was speaking in it, I remember), exploded long since from our very lowest places of diversion, and now exhibited here at Padua before a very polite and a very literary audience; and in a better theatre by far than our newly-adorned opera-house in the Hay-market. Its subject was no other than the birth of Harlequin; but the place and circumstances combined to make me look on it in a light which shewed it to uncommon advantage. The storm, for example, the thunder, darkness, &c. which is so solemnly made to precede an incantation, apparently not meant to be ridiculous, after which, a huge egg is somehow miraculously produced upon the stage, put me in mind of the very old mythologists, who thus desired to represent the chaotic state of things, when Night, Ocean, and Tartarus disputed in perpetual confusion; till Love and Music separated the elements, and as Dryden says,

For Cupid, advancing to a slow tune, steadies with his wand the rolling mass upon the stage, that then begins to teem with its motley inhabitant, and just representative of the created world, active, wicked, gay, amusing, which gains your heart, but never your esteem: tricking, shifting, and worthless as it is—but after all its frisks, all its escapes, is condemned at last to burn in fire, and pass entirely away. Such was, I trust, the idea of the person, whoever he was, that had the honour first to compose this curious exhibition, and model this mythological device into a pantomime! for the mundane, or as Proclus calls it, the orphick egg, is possibly the earliest of all methods taken to explain the rise, progress, and final conclusion of our earth and atmosphere; and was the original theory brought from Egypt into Greece by Orpheus. Nor has that prodigious genius, Dr. Thomas Burnet, scorned to adopt it seriously in his Telluris Theoria sacra, written less than a century ago, adapting it with wonderful ingenuity to the Christian system and Mosaical account of things; to which it certainly does accommodate itself the better, as the form of an egg well resembles that of our habitable globe; and the internal divisions, our four elements, leaving the central fire for the yolk. I therefore regarded our pantomime here at Padua with a degree of reverence I should have found difficult to excite in myself at Sadler's Wells; where ideas of antiquity would have been little likely to cross my fancy. Sure I am, however, that the original inventor of this old pantomime had his head very full at the time of some very ancient learning.

Now then I must leave this lovely state of Venice, where if the paupers in every town of it did not crowd about one, tormenting passengers with unextinguishable clamour, and surrounding them with sights of horror unfit to be surveyed by any eyes except those of the surgeon, who should alleviate their anguish, or at least conceal their truly unspeakable distresses—one should break one's heart almost at the thoughts of quitting people who show such tenderness towards their friends, that less than ocular conviction would scarce persuade me to believe such wandering misery could remain disregarded among the most amiable and pleasing people in the world. His excellency Bragadin half promised me that some steps should be taken at Venice at least, to remove a nuisance so disgraceful; and said, that when I came again, I should walk about the town in white sattin slippers, and never see a beggar from one end of it to the other.

On the twenty-sixth of May then, with the senator Quirini's letters to Corilla, with the Countess of Starenberg's letters to some Tuscan friends of her's; and with the light of a full moon, if we should want it, we set out again in quest of new adventures, and mean to sleep this night under the pope's protection:—may God but grant us his!

FERRERA.

We have crossed the Po, which I expected to have found more magnificent, considering the respectable state I left it in at Cremona; but scarcely any thing answers that expectation which fancy has long been fermenting in one's mind.

I took a young woman once with me to the coast of Sussex, who, at twenty-seven years old and a native of England, had never seen the sea; nor any thing else indeed ten miles out of London:—And well, child! said I, are not you much surprised?—"It is a fine sight, to be sure," replied she coldly, "but,"—but what? you are not disappointed are you?—"No, not disappointed, but it is not quite what I expected when I saw the ocean." Tell me then, pray good girl, and tell me quickly, what did you expect to see? "Why I expected," with a hesitating accent, "I expected to see a great deal of water." This answer set me then into a fit of laughter, but I have now found out that I am not a whit wiser than Peggy: for what did I figure to myself that I should find the Po? only a great deal of water to be sure; and a very great deal of water it certainly is, and much more, God knows, than I ever saw before, except between the shores of Calais and Dover; yet I did feel something like disappointment too; when my imagination wandering over all that the poets had said about it, and finding earth too little to contain their fables, recollected that they had thought Eridanus worthy of a place among the constellations, I wished to see such a river as was worthy all these praises, and even then, says I,

But are we sure after all it was upon the banks these trees, not now existing, were ever to be found? they grew in the Electrides if I remember right, and even there Lucian laughingly said, that he spread his garments in vain to catch the valuable distillation which poetry had taught him to expect; and Strabo (worse news still!) said that there were no Electrides neither; so as we knew before—fiction is false: and had I not discovered it by any other means, I might have recollected a comical contest enough between a literary lady once, and Doctor Johnson, to which I was myself a witness;—when she, maintaining the happiness and purity of a country life and rural manners, with her best eloquence, and she had a great deal; added as corroborative and almost incontestable authority, that the Poets said so: "and didst thou not know then," replied he, my darling dear, that the Poets lye?

When they tell us, however, that great rivers have horns, which twisted off become cornua copiæ, dispensing pleasure and plenty, they entertain us it must be confessed; and never was allegory more nearly allied with truth, than in the lines of Virgil;

so accurately translated by Doctor Warton, who would not reject the epithet bull-faced, because he knew it was given in imitation of the Thessalian river Achelous, that fought for Dejanira; and Servius, who makes him father to the Syrens, says that many streams, in compliment to this original one, were represented with horns, because of their winding course. Whether Monsieur Varillas, or our immortal Addison, mention their being so perpetuated on medals now existing, I know not; but in this land of rarities we shall soon hear or see.

Mean time let us leave looking for these weeping Heliades, and enquire what became of the Swan, that poor Phaeton's friend and cousin turned into, for very grief and fear at seeing him tumble in the water. For my part I believe that not only now he

but that the whole country is grown disagreeably hot to him, and the sight of the sun's chariot so near frightens him still; for he certainly lives more to his taste, and sings sweeter I believe on the banks of the Thames, than in Italy, where we have never yet seen but one; and that was kept in a small marble bason of water at the Durazzo palace at Genoa, and seemed miserably out of condition. I enquired why they gave him no companion? and received for answer, "That it would be wholly useless, as they were creatures who never bred out if their own country." But any reply serves any common Italian, who is little disposed to investigate matters; and if you tease him with too much ratiocination, is apt to cry out, "Cosa serve sosistieare cosi? ci farà andare tutti matti[V]." They have indeed so many external amusements in the mere face of the country, that one is better inclined to pardon them, than one would be to forgive inhabitants of less happy climates, should they suffer their intellectual powers to pine for want of exercise, not food: for here is enough to think upon, God knows, were they disposed so to employ their time; where one may justly affirm that,

The road from Padua hither is not a good one; but so adorned, one cares not much whether it is good or no: so sweetly are the mulberry-trees planted on each side, with vines richly festooning up and down them, as if for the decoration of a dance at the opera. One really expects the flower-girls with baskets, or garlands, and scarcely can persuade one's self that all is real.

Never sure was any thing more rejoicing to the heart, than this lovely season in this lovely country. The city of Ferrara too is a fine one; Ferrara la civile, the Italians call it, but it seems rather to merit the epithet solenne; so stately are its buildings, so wide and uniform its streets. My pen was just upon the point of praising its cleanliness too, till I reflected there was nobody to dirty it. I looked half an hour before I could find one beggar, a bad account of poor Ferrara; but it brought to my mind how unreasonably my daughter and myself had laughed seven years ago, at reading in an extract from some of the foreign gazettes, how the famous Improvisatore Talassi, who was in England about the year 1770, and entertained with his justly-admired talents the literati at London; had published an account of his visit to Mr. Thrale, at a villa eight miles from Westminster-bridge, during that time, when he had the good fortune, he said, to meet many celebrated characters at his country-seat; and the mortification which nearly overbalanced it, to miss seeing the immortal Garrick then confined by illness. In all this, however, there was nothing ridiculous; but we fancied his description of Streatham village truly so; when we read that he called it Luogo assai popolato ed ameno[A populous and delightful place], an expression apparently pompous, and inadequate to the subject: but the jest disappeared when I got into his town; a place which perhaps may be said to possess every other excellence but that of being popolato ed ameno; and I sincerely believe that no Ferrara-man could have missed making the same or a like observation; as in this finely-constructed city, the grass literally grows in the street; nor do I hear that the state of the air and water is such as is likely to tempt new inhabitants. How much then, and how reasonably must he have wondered, and how easily must he have been led to express his wonder, at seeing a village no bigger than that of Streatham, contain a number of people equal, as I doubt not but it does, to all the dwellers in Ferrara!

Mr. Talassi is reckoned in his own country a man of great genius; in ours he was, as I recollect, received with much attention, as a person able and willing to give us demonstration that improviso verses might be made, and sung extemporaneously to some well-known tune, generally one which admits of and requires very long lines; that so alternate rhymes may not be improper, as they give more time to think forward, and gain a moment for composition. Of this power, many, till they saw it done, did not believe the existence; and many, after they had seen it done, persisted in saying, perhaps in thinking, that it could be done only in Italian. I cannot however believe that they possess any exclusive privileges or supernatural gifts; though it will be hard to find one who thinks better of them than I do: but Spaniards can sing sequedillas under their mistresses window well enough; and our Welch people can make the harper sit down in the church-yard after service is over, and placing themselves round him, command the instrument to go over some old song-tune: when having listened a while, one of the company forms a stanza of verses, which run to it in well-adapted measure; and as he ends, another begins: continuing the tale, or retorting the satire, according to the style in which the first began it. All this too in a language less perhaps than any other melodious to the ear, though Howell found out a resemblance between their prosody and that of the Italian writer in early days, when they held agnominations, or the inforcement of consonant words and syllables one upon the other, to be elegant in a more eminent degree than they do now. For example, in Welch, Tewgris, todykris, ty'r derrin, gwillt, &c. in Italian, Donne, O danno che selo affronto affronta: in selva salvo a me, with a thousand more. The whole secret of improvisation, however, seems to consist in this; that extempore verses are never written down, and one may easily conceive that much may go off well with a good voice in singing, which no one would read if they were once registered by the pen.

I have already asserted that the Italians are not a laughing nation: were ridicule to step in among them, many innocent pleasures would soon be lost; and this among the first. For who would risque the making impromptu poems at Paris? pour s'attirer persiflage in every Coterie comme il faut[To draw upon one's self the ridicule of every polite assembly]? Or in London, at the hazard of being taken off, and held up for a laughing-stock at every print-seller's window? A man must have good courage in England, before he ventures at diverting a little company by such devices: while one would yawn, and one would whisper, a third would walk gravely out of the room, and say to his friend upon the stairs, "Why sure we had better read our old poets at home, than be called together, like fools, to hear what comes uppermost in such-a-one's head, about his Daphne! In good time! Why I have been tired of Daphne since I was fourteen years old." But the best jest of all would be, to see an ordinary fellow, a strolling player for example, set seriously to make or repeat verses in our streets or squares concerning his sweetheart's cruelty; when he would be in more danger from that of the mob and the magistrates; who, if the first did not throw dirt at him, and drive him home quickly, would come themselves, and examine into his sanity, and if they found him not statutably mad, commit him for a vagrant.

Different amusements, like different sorts of food, suit different countries; and this is among the efforts of those who have learned to refine their pleasures without so refining their ideas as to be able no longer to hit on any pleasure subtle enough to escape their own power of ridiculing it.

This city of Ferrara has produced some curious and opposite characters in times past, however empty it may now be thought: one painter too, and one singer, both super-eminent in their professions, have dropped their own names, and are best known to fame by that of Il and La Ferrarese. Nor can I leave it without some reflections on the extraordinary life of Renée de France, daughter of Louis XII surnamed the Just, and Anne de Bretagne, his first wife. This lady having married the famous Hercules D'Este, one of the handsomest men in Europe, lived with him here in much apparent felicity as Duchess of Ferrara; but took such an aversion to the church and court of Rome, from the superstitions she saw practised in Italy, that though she resolved to dissemble her opinions during the life of her husband, whom she wished not to disgust, at the instant of his death she quitted all her dignities; and retiring to France, was protected by her father in the open profession of Calvinism, living a life of privacy and purity among the Huguenots in the southern provinces. This Louis le Juste was he who gave the French what little pretensions they have ever obtained on which to fix the foundations of future liberty: he first established a parliament at Rouen, another at Aix; but while thus gentle to his subjects, he was a scourge to Italy, made his public entry into Genoa as Sovereign, and tore the Milanese from the Sforza family, somewhat before the year 1550.

The well-known Franciscus Ferrariensis, whose name was Silvester, is a character very opposite to that of fair Renée: he wrote the best apology for the Romanists against Luther, and gained applause from both sides for his controversial powers; while the strictness of his life gave weight to his doctrine, and ornamented the sect which he delighted to defend.

By a native of Ferrara too were first collected the books that were earliest placed in the Ambrosian library at Milan, Barnardine Ferrarius, whose deep erudition and simple manners gained him the favour of Frederick Borromeo, who sent him to Spain to pick up literary rarities, which he bestowed with pleasure on the place where he had received his education. His treatise on the rites of sepulture used by the ancients is in good estimation; and Sir Thomas Brown, in his Urn Burial, owes him much obligation.

The custom of wearing swords here seems to proceed from some connection they have had with the Spaniards; and Dr. Moore has given us an admirable account of why the Highland broad-sword is still called an Andrew Ferrara.

The Venetians, not often or easily intimidated by Papal power, having taken this city in the year 1303, were obliged to restore it, for fear of the consequences of Pope Boniface the Eighth's excommunications; his displeasure having before then produced dreadful effects in the conspiracy of Bajamonti Tiepulo; which was suppressed, and he killed, by a woman, out of a flaming zeal for the honour and tranquillity of her country: and so disinterested too was her spirit of patriotism, that the only reward she required for a service so essential, was that a constant memorial of it might be preserved in the dress of the Doge; who from that moment obliged himself to wear a woman's cap under the state diadem, and so his successors still continue to do.

But Ferrara has other distinctions.—Bonarelli here, at the academy of gl'Intrepidi, read his able defence of that pastoral comedy so much applauded and censured, called Filli di Sciro; and here the great Ariosto lived and died.

Nothing leads however to a less gloomy train of thought, than the tomb of a celebrated man; where virtue, wit, or valour triumph over death, and wait the consummation of all sublunary things, before the remembrance of such superiority shall be lost. Italy must be shaken from her deepest foundation, and England made a scene of general ruin, when Shakespear and Ariosto shall be forgotten, and their names confounded among deedless nobility, and worthless wasters of treasure, long ago passed from hand to hand, perhaps from the dwellers in one continent to the inhabitants of another. It has been equally the fate of these two heroes of modern literature, that they have pleased their countrymen more than foreigners; but is that any diminution of their merit? or should it serve as a reason for making disgraceful comparisons between Ariosto and Virgil, whom he scorned to imitate? A dead language is like common ground;—all have a right to pasture, and all a claim to give or to withhold admiration. Virgil is the old original trough at the corner of the road, where every passer-by pays, drinks, and goes on his journey well refreshed. But the clear spring in the meadow sure, though private property, and lately dug, deserves attention: and confers delight not only on the actual master of the ground, but on all his visitants who can climb the style, and lift the silver cup to their lips which hangs by the fountain-side.

I am glad, however, to be gone from a place where they are thinking less of all these worthies just at present, than of a circumstance which cannot redound to their honour, as it might have happened to any other town, and could do great good to none: no less than the happy arrival of Joseph, and Leopold, and Maximilian of Austria, on the thirtieth of May 1775; and this wonderful event have they recorded in a pompous inscription upon a stone set at the inn door. But princes can make poets, and scatter felicity with little exertion on their own parts.

At Tuillemont, an English gentleman once told me he had the misfortune to sleep one night where all the people's heads were full of the Emperor, who had dined there the day before; and some wise fellow of the place wrote these lines under his picture:

He immediately set down this distich under them:

The people of the inn concluding that this must be a high-strained compliment, it produced him many thanks from all, and a better breakfast than he would otherwise have obtained at Tuillemont.

To-morrow we go forward to Bologna.

BOLOGNA.

SEEMS at first sight a very sorrowful town, and has a general air of melancholy that surprises one, as it is very handsomely and regularly built; and set in a country so particularly beautiful, that it is not easy to express the nature of its beauty, and to express it so that those who inhabit other countries can understand me.

The territory belonging to Bologna la Grassa concenters all its charms in a happy embonpoint, which leaves no wrinkle unfilled up, no bone to be discerned; like the fat figure of Gunhilda at Fonthill, painted by Chevalier Cafali, with a face full of woe, but with a sleekness of skin that denotes nothing less than affliction. From the top of the only eminence, one looks down here upon a country which to me has a new and singular appearance; the whole horizon appearing one thick carpet of the softest and most vivid green, from the vicinity of the broad-leaved mulberry trees, I trust, drawn still closer and closer together by their amicable and pacific companions the vines, which keep cluttering round, and connect them so intimately that no object can be separately or distinctly viewed, any more than the habitations formed by animals who live in moss, when a large portion of it is presented to the philosopher for speculation. One would not therefore, on a flight and cursory inspection, suspect this of being a painter's country, where no prominence of features arrests the sight, no expression of latent meaning employs the mind, and no abruptness of transition tempts fancy to follow, or imagination to supply, the sudden loss of what it contemplated before.

Here however the great Caraccis kept their school; here then was every idea of dignity and majestic beauty to be met with; and if I meet with nothing in nature near this place to excite such ideas, it is my fault, not Bologna's.

Wonderful indeed! yet not at all distracting is the variety of excellence that one contemplates here; such matters! and such scholars! The sweetly playful pencil of Albano, I would compare to Waller among our English poets; Domenichino to Otway, and Guido Rheni to Rowe; if such liberties might be permitted on the old notion of ut pictura poesis. But there is an idea about the world, that one ought in delicacy to declare one's utter incapacity of understanding pictures, unless immediately of the profession.—And why so? No man protests, that he cannot read poetry, he can make no pleasure out of Milton or Shakespear, or shudder at the ingratitude of Lear's daughters on the stage. Why then should people pretend insensibility, when divine Guercino exerts his unrivalled powers of the pathetic in the fine picture at Zampieri palace, of Hagar's dismission into the desert with her son? While none else could have touched with such truth of expression the countenances of each; leaving him most to be pitied, perhaps, who issues the command against his will; accompanying it however with innumerable benedictions, and alleviating its severity with the softest tenderness.

He only among our poets could have planned such a picture, who penned the Eloisa, and knew the agonies of a soul struggling against unpermitted passions, and conquering from the noblest motives of faith and of obedience.

Glorious exertion of excellence! This is the first time my heart has been made really alive to the powers of this magical art. Candid Italians! let me again exclaim; they shewed us a Vandyke in the same palace, surrounded by the works of their own incomparable countrymen; and there say they, "Quasi quasi si può circondarla[You may almost run round her]." You may almost run round it, was the expression. The picture was a very fine one; a single figure of the Madona, highly painted, and happily placed among those who knew, because they possessed his perfections who drew it. Were Homer alive, and acquainted with our language, he would admire that Shakespear whom Voltaire condemns. Twice in this town has Guido shewed those powers which critics have denied him: the power of grouping his figures with propriety, and distributing his light and shadow to advantage: as he has shewn it but twice, however, it is certain the connoisseurs are not very wrong, and even in those very performances one may read their justification: for Job, though surrounded by a crowd of people, has a strangely insulated look, and the sweet sufferer on the fore-ground of his Herodian cruelty seems wholly uninterested in the general distress, and occupies herself and every spectator completely and solely with her own particular grief.

The boasted Raphael here does not in my eyes triumph over the wonders of this Caracci school. At Rome, I am told, his superiority is more visible. Nous verrons[We shall see].

The reserved picture of St. Peter and St. Paul, kept in the last chamber of the Zampieri palace, and covered with a silk curtain, is valued beyond any specimen of the painting art which can be moved from Italy to England. We are taught to hope it will soon come among us; and many say the sale cannot be now long delayed. Why Guido should never draw another picture like that, or at all in the same style, who can tell? it certainly does unite every perfection, and every possible excellence, except choice of subject, which cannot be happy I think, when the subject itself is left disputable.

I will mention only one other picture: it is in an obscure church, not an unfrequented one by these pious Bolognese, who are the most devout people I ever lived amongst, but I think not much visited by travellers. It is painted by Albano, and represents the Redeemer of mankind as a boy scarce thirteen years old: ingenuous modesty, and meek resignation, beaming from each intelligent feature of a face divinely beautiful, and throwing out luminous rays round his sacred head, while the blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, placed on each side him, adore his goodness with transport not unmixed with wonder: the instruments of his future passion cast at his feet, directing us to consider him as in that awful moment voluntarily devoting himself for the sins of the whole world.

This picture, from the sublimity of the subject, the lively colouring, and clear expression, has few equals; the pyramidal group drops in as of itself, unsought for, from the raised ground on which our Saviour stands; and among numberless wild conceits and extravagant fancies of painters, not only permitted but encouraged in this country, to deviate into what we justly think profane representations of the deity:—this is the most pleasing and inoffensive device I have seen.

The august Creator too is likewise more wisely concealed by Albano than by other artists, who daringly presume to exhibit that of which no mortal man can give or receive a just idea. But we will have done for a while with connoisseurship.

This fat Bologna has a tristful look, from the numberless priests, friars, and women all dressed in black, who fill the streets, and stop on a sudden to pray, when I see nothing done to call forth immediate addresses to Heaven. Extremes do certainly meet however, and my Lord Peter in this place is so like his fanatical brother Jack, that I know not what is come to him. To-morrow is the day of corpus domini; why it should be preceded by such dismal ceremonies I know not; there is nothing melancholy in the idea, but we shall be sure of a magnificent procession.

So it was too, and wonderfully well attended: noblemen and ladies, with tapers in their hands, and their trains borne by well-dressed pages, had a fine effect. All still in black.

I never saw a spectacle so stately, so solemn a show in my life before, and was much less tired of the long continued march, than were my Roman Catholic companions.

Our inn is not a good one; the Pellegrino is engaged for the King of Naples and his train: the place we are housed in, is full of bugs, and every odious vermin: no wonder, surely, where such oven-like porticoes catch and retain the heat as if constructed on set purpose so to do. The Montagnola at night was something of relief, but contrary to every other resort of company: the less it is frequented the gayer it appears; for Nature there has been lavish of her bounties, which seem disregarded by the Bolognese, who unluckily find out that there is a burying-ground within view, though at no small distance really; and planting themselves over against that, they stand or kneel for many minutes together in whole rows, praying, as I understand, for the souls which once animated the bodies of the people whom they believe to lie interred there; all this too even at the hours dedicated to amusement.

Cardinal Buon Compagni, the legate, sent from Rome here, is gone home; and the vice-legate officiated in his place, much to the consolation of the inhabitants, who observed with little delight or gratitude his endeavours to improve their trade, or his care to maintain their privileges; while his natural disinclination to hypocritical manners, or what we so emphatically call cant, gave them an aversion to his person and dislike of his government, which he might have prevented by formality of look, and very trifling compliances. But every thing helps to prove, that if you would please people, it must be done their way, not your own.

Here are some charming manufactures in this town, and I fear it requires much self-denial in an Englishwoman not to long at least for the fine crapes, tiffanies, &c. which might here be bought I know not how cheap, and would make one so happy in London or at Bath. But these Customhouse officers! these rats de cave, as the French comically call them, will not let a ribbon pass. Such is the restless jealousy of little states, and such their unremitted attention to keep the goods made in one place out of the gates of another. Few things upon a journey contribute to torment and disgust one more than the teasing enquiries at the door of every city, who one is, what one's name is? what one's rank in life or employment is; that so all may be written down and carried to the chief magistrate for his information, who immediately dispatches a proper person to examine whether you gave in a true report; where you lodge, why you came, how long you mean to stay; with twenty more inquisitive speeches, which to a subject of more liberal governments must necessarily appear impertinent as frivolous, and make all my hopes of bringing home the most trifling presents for a friend abortive. So there is an end of that felicity, and we must sit like the girl at the fair, described by Gay,

The Specola, so they call their museum here, of natural and artificial rarities, is very fine indeed; the inscription too denoting its universality, is sublimely generous: I thought of our Bath hospital in England; more usefully, if not more magnificently so; but durst not tell the professor, who shewed the place. At our going in he was apparently much out of humour, and unwilling to talk, but grew gradually kinder, and more communicative; and I had at last a thousand thanks to pay for an attention that rendered the sight of all more valuable. Nothing can surpass the neatness and precision with which this elegant repository is kept, and the curiosities contained in it have specimens very uncommon. The native gold shewed here is supposed to be the largest and most perfect lump in Europe; wonderfully beautiful it certainly is, and the coral here is such as can be seen nowhere else; they shewed me some which looked like an actual tree.

It might reasonably lower the spirits of philosophy, and tend to restraining the genius of remote enquiry, did we reflect that the very first substance given into our hand as an amusement, or subject of speculation, as soon as we arrive in this great world of wonders, never gets fully understood by those who study hardest, or live longest in it.

Coral is a substance, concerning which the natural historians have had many disputes, and settled nothing yet; knowing, as it should seem, but little more of its original, than they did when they sucked it first. Of gold we have found perhaps but too many uses; but when the professor told us here at Bologna, that silver in the mine was commonly found mixed with arsenick, a corroding poison, or lead, a narcotic one; who could help being led forward to a train of thought on the nature and use and abuse of money and minerals in general. Suivez (as Rousseau says), la chaine de tout cela[Follow this clue, and see where it will lead you to].

The astronomical apparatus at this place is a splendid one; but the models of architecture, fortifications, &c. are only more numerous; not so exact or elegant I think as those the King of England has for his own private use at the Queen's house in St. James's Park. The specimens of a human figure in wax are the work of a woman, whose picture is accordingly set up in the school: they are reckoned incomparable of their kind, and bring to one's fancy Milton's fine description of our first parents:

This University has been particularly civil to women; many very learned ladies of France and Germany have been and are still members of it;—and la Dottoressa Laura Bassi gave lectures not many years ago in this very spot, upon the mathematics and natural philosophy, till she grew very old and infirm; but her pupils always handed her very respectfully to and from the Doctor's chair, Che brava donnetta ch'era![Ah, what a fine woman was that!] says the gentleman who shewed me the academy, as we came out at the door; over which a marble tablet, with an inscription more pious than pompous, is placed to her memory; but turning away his eyes—while they filled with tears—tutli muosono[All must die.], added he, and I followed; as nothing either of energy or pathos could be added to a reflection so just, so tender, and so true: we parted sadly therefore with our agreeable companion and instructor just where her cenotaph (for the body lies buried in a neighbouring church) was erected; and shall probably meet no more; for as he said and sighed—tutti muosono[All must die].

The great Cassini too, who though of an Italian family, was born at Nice I think, and died at Paris, drew his meridian line through the church of St. Petronius in this city, across the pavement, where it still remains a monument to his memory, who discovered the third and fifth satellites of Jupiter. Such was in his time the reputation of a mineral spring near Bologna, that Pope Alexander the Seventh set him to analyse the waters of it; and so satisfactory were his proofs of its very slight importance to health, that the same pope called him to Rome to examine the waters round that capital; but dying soon after his arrival, he had no time to recompence Cassini's labours, though a very elegantly-minded man, and a great encourager of learning in all its branches. The successor to this sovereign, Rospigliosi, had different employment found for him, in helping the Venetians to regain Candia from the Turks, his disappointment in not being able to accomplish which design broke his heart; and Cassini, returning to Bologna, found it less pleasing than it was before he left it, so went to Paris, and died there at ninety or ninety-one years old, as I remember, early in this present century, but not till after he had enjoyed the pleasure of hearing that Count Marsigli had founded an academy at the place where he had studied whilst his faculties were strong.

Another church, situated on the only hill one can observe for miles, is dedicated to the Madonna St. Luc, as it is called; and a very beautiful and curiously covered way is made to it up the hill, for three miles in length, and at a prodigious expence, to guard the figure from the rain as it is carried in procession. The ascent is so gentle that one hardly feels it. Pillars support the roof, which defends you from a sun-stroke, while the air and prospect are let in between them on the right hand as you go. The left side is closed up by a wall, adorned from time to time with fresco paintings, representing the birth and most distinguished passages in the life of the blessed Virgin. Round these paintings a little chapel is railed in, open, airy, and elegantly, not very pompously, adorned; there are either seven or twelve of them, I forget which, that serve to rest the procession as it passes, on days particularly dedicated to her service. When you arrive at the top, a church of a most beautiful construction recompenses your long but not tedious walk, and there are some admirable pictures in it, particularly one of St. William laying down his armour, and taking up the habit of a Carthusian, very fine—but the figure of the Madonna is the prize they value, and before this I did see some men kneel with a truly idolatrous devotion. That it was painted by St. Luke is believed by them all. But if it was painted by St. Luke, said I, what then? do you think he, or the still more excellent person it was done for, would approve of your worshipping any thing but God? To this no answer was made; and I thought one man looked as if he had grace enough to be ashamed of himself.

The girls, who sit in clusters at the chapel doors as one goes up, singing hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary, pleased me much, as it was a mode of veneration inoffensive to religion, and agreeable to the fancy; but seeing them bow down to that black figure, in open defiance of the Decalogue, shocked me. Why all the very very early pictures of the Virgin, and many of our blessed Saviour himself, done in the first ages of Christianity should be black, or at least tawny, is to me wholly incomprehensible, nor could I ever yet obtain an explanation of its cause from men of learning or from connoisseurs.

We have in England a black Madonna, very ancient of course, and of immense value, in the cathedral of Wells in Somersetshire; it is painted on glass, and stands in the middle pane of the upper window I think, is a profile face, and eminently handsome. My mind tells me that I have seen another somewhere in Great Britain, but cannot recollect the spot, unless it were Arundel Castle in Sussex, but I am not sure: none was ever painted so since the days of Pietro Perugino I believe, so their antiquity is unquestionable: he and his few contemporaries drew her white, as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Pompeio Battoni.

Whilst I perambulated the palaces of the Bolognese nobility, gloomy though spacious, and melancholy though splendid, I could not but admire at Richardson's judgment when he makes his beautiful Bigot, his interesting Clementina, an inhabitant of superstitious Bologna. The unconquerable attachment she shews to original prejudices, and the horror of what she has been taught to consider as heresy, could scarcely have been attributed so happily to the dweller in any town but this: where I hear nothing but the sound of people saying their rosaries, and see nothing in the street but people telling their beads. The Porretta palace is hourly presenting itself to my imagination, which delights in the assurance that genius cannot be confined by place. Dear Richardson at Salisbury Court Fleet Street, and Parson's Green Fulham, felt all within him that travelling can tell, or experience confirm: he had seen little, and Johnson has often told me that he had read little; but what he did read never forsook a memory that was not contented with retaining, but fermented all that fell into it, and made a new creation from the fertility of his own rich mind.—These are the men for whom monuments need not be erected.

as Milton says of a much greater writer still.

But the King of Naples is arrived, and that attention which wits and scholars can retain for centuries, may not be unjustly paid to princes while they last.

Our Bolognese have hit upon an odd method of entertaining him however: no other than making a representation of Mount Vesuvius on the Montagnuola, or place of evening resort, hoping at least to treat him with something new I trow. Were the King of England to visit these cari Bolognese, surely they would shew him Westminster Bridge, with a view of the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth on one side the river, and Somerset-house on the other.

A pretty throne, or state-box, was soon got in order, that it was; and the motion excited by carrying the fire-works to have them prepared for the evening's show, gave life to the morning, which hung less heavily than usual; nor did the people recollect the church-yard at a distance, while the merry King of Naples was near them. His Majesty appeared perfectly contented and good-humoured, and happy with whatever was done for his amusement. I remember his behaviour at Milan though, too well to be surprised at his pleasantness of disposition, when my maid was delighted to see him dance among the girls at a Festa di Ballo, from whence I retired early myself, and sent her back to enjoy it all in my domino. He played at cards too when at Milan I recollect, in the common Ridotto Chamber at the Theatre, and played for common sums, so as to charm every one with his kindness and affability.

I am glad however that we shall now be soon released from this upon the whole disagreeable town, where there is the best possible food too for body and mind; but where the inhabitants seem to think only of the next world, and do little to amuse those who have not yet quite done with this. If they are sincere mean time, God will bless them with a long continuance of the appellation they so justly deserve; and those travellers who pass through will find some amends in the rich cream and incomparable dinners every day, for the insects that devour them every night; and will, if they are wise, seek compensation from the company of the half animated pictures that crowd the palaces and churches, for the half dead inhabitants who kneel in the streets of Bologna.

FLORENCE.

We slept no-where, except perhaps in the carriage, between our last residence at Bologna and this delightful city, to which we passed apparently through a new region of the earth, or even air; clambering up mountains covered with snow, and viewing with amazement the little vallies between, where, after quitting the summer season, all glowing with heat and spread into verdure, we found cherry-trees in blossom, oaks and walnuts scarcely beginning to bud. These mountains are however much below those of Savoy for dignity and beauty of appearance, though high enough to be troublesome, and barren enough to be desolate. These Appenines have been called by some the Back Bone of Italy, as Varenius and others style the Mountains of the Moon in Africa, Back Bone of the World; and these, as they do, run in a long chain down the middle of the Peninsula they are placed in; but being rounded at top are supposed to be aquatick, while the Alps, Andes, &c. are of late acknowledged by philosophers to be volcanic, as the most lofty of them terminate in points of granite, wholly devoid of horizontal strata, and without petrifactions contained in them,

But the offspring of fire somehow should be more striking than that of water, however violent might have been the concussion that produced them; and there is no comparison between the sensations felt in passing the Roche Melon, and these more neatly-moulded Appenines; upon whose tops I am told too no lakes have been formed, as on Mount Cenis, or even on Snowdon in North Wales, where a very beautiful lake adorns the summit of the rock; which affords trout precisely such as you eat before you go down to Novalesa, but not so large.

Sir William Hamilton, however, is the man to be referred to in all these matters; no man has examined the peculiar properties and general nature of mountains, those which vomit fire in particular, with half as much application, inspired by half as much genius, as he has done.

We arrived late at our inn, an English one they say it is; and many of the last miles were passed very pleasantly by my maid and myself, in anticipating the comforts we should receive by finding ourselves among our own country folks. In good time! and by once more eating, sleeping, &c. all in the English way, as her phrase is. Accordingly, here are small low beds again, soft and clean, and down pillows; here are currant tarts, which the Italians scorn to touch, but which we are happy and delighted to pay not ten but twenty times their value for, because a currant tart is so much in the English way: and here are beans and bacon in a climate where it is impossible that bacon should be either wholesome or agreeable; and one eats infinitely worse than one did at Milan, Venice, or Bologna: and infinitely dearer too; but that makes it still more completely in the English way.

Mean time here we are however in Arno's Vale; the full moon shining over Fiesole, which I see from my windows. Milton's verses every moment in one's mouth, and Galileo's house twenty yards from one's door,

Our apartments here are better than we hoped for, situated most sweetly on the banks of this classical stream; a noble terrace underneath our window, broad as the south parade at Bath I think, and the fine Ponte della Santa Trinità within sight. Many people have asserted that this is the first among all bridges in the world; but architecture triumphs in the art of building bridges, and, though this is a most exquisitely beautiful fabric, I can scarcely venture to call it an unrivalled one: it shall, if the fine statues at the corners can assist its power over the fancy, and if cleanliness can compensate for stately magnificence, or for the fire of original and unassisted genius, it shall obliterate from my mind the Rialto at Venice, and the fine arch thrown over the Conway at Llanwrst in our North Wales.

I wrote to a lady at Venice this morning though, to say, however I might be charmed by the sweets of Arno's side, I could not forbear regretting the Grand Canal.

Count Manucci, a nobleman of this city, formerly intimate with Mr. Thrale in London and Mr. Piozzi at Paris, came early to our apartments, and politely introduced us to the desirable society of his sisters and his friends. We have in his company and that of Cavalier d'Elci, a learned and accomplished man, of high birth, deep erudition, and polished manners, seen much, and with every possible advantage.

This morning they shewed us La Capella St. Lorenzo, where I could but think how surprisingly Mr. Addison's prediction was verified, that these slow Florentines would not perhaps be able to finish the burial-place of their favourite family, before the family itself should be extinct. This reflection felt like one naturally suggested to me by the place; Doctor Moore however has the original merit of it, as I afterwards found it in his book: but it is the peculiar property of natural thoughts well expressed, to sink into one's mind and incorporate themselves with it, so as to make one forget they were not all one's own.

Poets, as well as jesters, do oft prove prophets: Prior's happy prediction for the female wits in one of his epilogues is come true already, when he says,

and every hour gives one reason to hope that Mr. Pope's glorious prophecy in favour of the Negroes will not now remain long unaccomplished, but that liberty will extend her happy influence over the world;

I will not extend myself in describing the heaps of splendid ruin in which the rich chapel of St. Lorenzo now lies: since the elegant Lord Corke's letters were written, little can be said about Florence not better said by him; who has been particularly copious in describing a city which every body wishes to see copiously described.

The libraries here are exceedingly magnificent; and we were called just now to that which goes under Magliabechi's name, to hear an eulogium finely pronounced upon our circumnavigator Captain Cook; whose character has attracted the attention, and extorted the esteem of every European nation: far less was the wonder that it forced my tears; they flowed from a thousand causes: my distance from England! my pleasure in hearing an Englishman thus lamented in a language with which he had no acquaintance!

Every thing contributed to soften my heart, though not to lower my spirits. For when a Florentine asked me, how I came to cry so? I answered, in the words of their divine Mestastasio:

Giannetti, who pronounced the panegyric, is the justly-celebrated improvisatore so famous for making Latin verses impromptu, as others do Italian ones: the speech has been translated into English by Mr. Merry, with whom I had the honour here first to make acquaintance, having met him at Mr. Greatheed's, who is our fellow-lodger, and with whom and his amiable family the time passes in reciprocations of confidential friendship and mutual esteem.

Lord and Lady Cowper too contribute to make the society at this place more pleasing than can be imagined; while English hospitality softens down the stateliness of Tuscan manners.

Sir Horace Mann is sick and old; but there are conversations at his house of a Saturday evening, and sometimes a dinner, to which we have been almost always asked.

The fruits in this place begin to astonish me; such cherries did I never yet see, or even hear tell of, as when I caught the Laquais de Place weighing two of them in a scale to see if they came to an ounce. These are, in the London street phrase, cherries like plums, in size at least, but in flavour they far exceed them, being exactly of the kind that we call bleeding-hearts, hard to the bite, and parting easily from the stone, which is proportionately small. Figs too are here in such perfection, that it is not easy for an English gardener to guess at their excellence; for it is not by superior size, but taste and colour, that they are distinguished; small, and green on the outside, a bright full crimson within, and we eat them with raw ham, and truly delicious is the dainty. By raw ham, I mean ham cured, not boiled or roasted. It is no wonder though that fruits should mature in such a sun as this is; which, to give a just notion of its penetrating fire, I will take leave to tell my countrywomen is so violent, that I use no other method of heating the pinching-irons to curl my hair, than that of poking them out at a south window, with the handles shut in, and the glasses darkened to keep us from being actually fired in his beams. Before I leave off speaking about the fruit, I must add, that both fig and cherry are produced by standards; that the strawberries here are small and high-flavoured, like our woods, and that there are no other. England affords greater variety in that kind of fruit than any nation; and as to peaches, nectarines, or green-gage plums, I have seen none yet. Lady Cowper has made us a present of a small pine-apple, but the Italians have no taste to it. Here is sun enough to ripen them without hot-houses I am sure, though they repeatedly told us at Milan and Venice, that this was the coolest place to pass the summer in, because of the Appenine mountains shading us from the heat, which they confessed to be intolerable with them.

Here however, they inform us, that it is madness to retire into the country as English people do during the hot season; for as there is no shade from high timber trees, one is bit to death by animals, gnats in particular, which here are excessively troublesome, even in the town, notwithstanding we scatter vinegar, and use all the arts in our power; but the ground-floor is coolest, and every body struggles to get themselves a terreno as they call it.

Florence is full just now, and Mr. Jean Figliazzi, an intelligent gentleman who lives here, and is well acquainted with both nations, says, that all the genteel people come to take refuge from the country to Florence in July and August, as the subjects of Great Britain run to the country from the heats of London or Bath.

The flowers too! how rich they are in scent here! how brilliant in colour! how magnificent in size! Wall-flowers perfuming every street, and even every passage; while pinks and single carnations grow beside them, with no more soil than they require themselves; and from the tops of houses, where you least expect it, an aromatic flavour highly gratifying is diffused. The jessamine is large, broad-leaved, and beautiful as an orange-flower; but I have seen no roses equal to those at Lichfield, where on one tree I recollect counting eighty-four within my own reach; it grew against the house of Doctor Darwin. Such a profusion of sweets made me enquire yesterday morning for some scented pomatum, and they brought me accordingly one pot impelling strong of garden mint, the other of rue and tansy.

Thus do the inhabitants of every place forfeit or fling away those pleasures, which the inhabitants of another place think they would use in a much wiser manner, had Providence bestowed the blessing upon them.

A young Milanese once, whom I met in London, saw me treat a hatter that lives in Pallmall with the respect due to his merit: when the man was gone, "Pray, madam, says the Italian, "is this a gran riccone?"[Heavy-pursed fellow.] "He is perhaps," replied I, "worth twenty or thirty thousand pounds; I do not know what ideas you annex to a gran riccone" "Oh santissima vergine!" exclaims the youth, "s'avessi io mai settanta mila zecchini! non so pur troppo cosa nesarei; ma questo é chiaro—non venderei mai cappelli"—"Oh dear me! had I once seventy thousand sequins in my pocket, I would—dear—I cannot think myself what I should do with them all: but this at least is certain, I would not sell hats"

I have been carried to the Laurentian library, where the librarian Bandi shewed me all possible, and many unmerited civilities; which, for want of deeper erudition, I could not make the use I wished of. We asked however to see some famous manuscripts. The Virgil has had a fac simile made of it, and a printed copy besides; so that it cannot now escape being known all over Europe. The Bible in Chaldaic characters, spoken of by Langius as inestimable, and brought hither, with many other valuable treasures of the same nature, by Lascaris, after the death of Lorenzo de Medici, who had sent him for the second time to Constantinople for the purpose of collecting Greek and Oriental books, but died before his return, is in admirable preservation. The old geographical maps, made out in a very early age, afforded me much amusement; and the Latin letters of Petrarch, with the portrait of his Laura, were interesting to me perhaps more than many other things rated much higher by the learned, among those rarities which adorn a library so comprehensive.

Every great nation except ours, which was immersed in barbarism, and engaged in civil broils, seems to have courted the residence of Lascaris, but the university of Paris fixed his regard: and though Leo X. treated with favour, and even friendship, the man whom he had encouraged to intimacy when Cardinal John of Medicis; though he made him superintendant of a Greek college at Rome; it is said he always wished to die in France, whither he returned in the reign of Francis the First; and wrote his Latin epigrams, which I have heard Doctor Johnson prefer even to the Greek ones preserved in Anthologia; and of which our Queen Elizabeth, inspired by Roger Ascham, desired to see the author; but he was then upon a visit to Rome, where he died of the gout at ninety-three years old.

June 24, 1785.

St. John the Baptist is the tutelary Saint of this city, and upon this day of course all possible rejoicings are made. After attending divine service in the morning, we were carried to a house whence we could conveniently see the procession pass by. It was not solemn and stately as that I saw at Bologna, neither was it gaudy and jocund like the show made at Venice upon St. George's day; but consisted chiefly in vast heavy pageants, or a sort of temporary building set on wheels, and drawn by oxen some, and some by horses; others carried upon things made not unlike a chairman's horse in London, and supported by men, while priests, in various coloured dresses, according to their several stations in the church, and to distinguish the parishes, &c. to which they belong, follow singing in praise of the saint.

Here is much emulation shewed too, I am told, in these countries, where religion makes the great and almost the sole amusement of men's lives, who shall make most figure on St. John the Baptist's day, produce most music, and go to most expence. For all these purposes subscriptions are set on foot, for ornamenting and venerating such a picture, statue, &c. which are then added to the procession by the managers, and called a Confraternity, in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angel Raphael, or who comes in their heads.

The lady of the house where we went to partake the diversion, was not wanting in her part; there could not be fewer than a hundred and fifty people assembled in her rooms, but not crowded as we should have been in England; for the apartments in Italy are all high and large, and run in suits like Wanstead house in Essex, or Devonshire house in London exactly, but larger still: and with immense balconies and windows, not sashes, which move all away, and give good room and air. The ices, refreshments, &c. were all excellent in their kinds, and liberally dispensed. The lady seemed to do the honours of her house with perfect good-humour; and every body being full-dressed, though so early in a morning, added much to the general effect of the whole.

Here I had the honour of being introduced to Cardinal Corsini, who put me a little out of countenance by saying suddenly, "Well, madam! you never saw one of us red-legged partridges before I believe; but you are going to Rome I hear, where you will find such fellows as me no rarities" The truth is, I had seen the amiable Prince d'Orini at Milan, who was a Cardinal; and who had taken delight in showing me prodigious civilities: nothing ever struck me more than his abrupt entrance one night at our house, when we had a little music, and every body stood up the moment he appeared: the Prince however walked forward to the harpsichord, and blessed my husband in a manner the most graceful and affecting: then sate the amusement out, and returned the next morning to breakfast with us, when he indulged us with two hours conversation at least; adding the kindest and most pressing invitations to his country-seat among the mountains of Brianza, when we should return from our tour of Italy in spring 1786. Florence therefore was not the first place that shewed me a Cardinal.

In the afternoon we all looked out of our windows which faced the street,—not mine, as they happily command a view of the river, the Caseine woods, &c. and from them enjoyed a complete sight of an Italian horse-race. For after the coaches have paraded up and down some time to shew the equipages, liveries, &c. all have on a sudden notice to quit the scene of action; and all do quit it, in such a manner as is surprising. The street is now covered with sawdust, and made fast at both ends: the starting-post is adorned with elegant booths, lined with red velvet, for the court and first nobility: at the other end a piece of tapestry is hung, to prevent the creatures from dashing their brains out when they reach the goal. Thousands and ten thousands of people on foot fill the course, that it is standing wonder to me still that numbers are not killed. The prizes are now exhibited to view, quite in the old classical style; a piece of crimson damask for the winner perhaps; a small silver bason and ewer for the second; and so on, leaving no performer unrewarded. At last come out the concurrenti without riders, but with a narrow leathern strap hung across their backs, which has a lump of ivory fastened to the end of it, all set full of sharp spikes like a hedge-hog, and this goads them along while galloping, worse than any spurs could do; because the faster they run, the more this odd machine keeps jumping up and down, and pricking their sides ridiculously enough; and it makes one laugh to see that some of them are not provoked by it not to run at all, but set about plunging, in order to rid themselves of the inconvenience, instead of driving forward to divert the mob; who leap and shout and caper with delight, and lash the laggers along with great indignation indeed, and with the most comical gestures. I never saw horses in so droll a state of degradation before, for they are all striped or spotted, or painted of some colour to distinguish them each from other; and nine or ten often start at a time, to the great danger of lookers-on I think, but exceedingly to my entertainment, who have the comfort of Mrs. Greatheed's company, and the advantage of seeing all safely from her well-situated terreno, or ground-floor.

The chariot-race was more splendid, but less diverting: this was performed in the Piazza, or Square, an unpaved open place not bigger than Covent Garden I believe, and the ground strangely uneven. The cars were light and elegant; one driver and two horses to each: the first very much upon the principle of the antique chariots described by old poets, and the last trapped showily in various colours, adapted to the carriages, that people might make their betts accordingly upon the pink, the blue, the green, &c. I was exceedingly amused with seeing what so completely revived all classic images, and seemed so little altered from the classic times. Cavalier D'Elci, in reply to my expressions of delight, told me that the same spirit still subsisted exactly; but that in order to prevent accidents arising from the disputants' endeavours to overturn or circumvent each other, it was now sunk into a mere appearance of contest; for that all the chariots belonged to one man, who would doubtless be careful enough that his coachmen should not go to sparring at the hazard of their horses. The farce was carried on to the end however, and the winner spread his velvet in triumph, and drove round the course to enjoy the acclamations and caresses of the crowd.

That St. John the Baptist's birth-day should be celebrated by a horse or chariot race, appears to have little claim to the praise of propriety; but mankind seems agreed that there must be some excuse for merriment; and surely if any saint is to be venerated, he stands foremost whom Christ himself declared to be the greatest man ever born of a woman.

The old Romans had an institution in this month of games to Neptune Equester, as they called their Sea God, with no great appearance of good sense neither; but the horse he produced at the naming of Athens was the cause assigned—these games are perhaps half transmitted ones from those in the ancient mythology.

The evening concluded, and the night began with fire-works; the church, or duomo, as a cathedral is always called in Italy, was illuminated on the outside, and very beautiful, and very very magnificent was the appearance. The reflection of the cupola's lights in the river gave us back a faint image of what we had been admiring; and when I looked at them from my window, as we were retiring to rest; such, thought I, and fainter still are the images which can be given of a show in written or verbal description; yet my English friends shall not want an account of what I have seen; for Italy, at last, is only a fine well-known academy figure, from which we all sit down to make drawings according as the light falls; and our seat affords opportunity. Every man sees that, and indeed most things, with the eyes of his then present humour, and begins describing away so as to convey a dignified or despicable idea of the object in question, just as his disposition led him to interpret its appearance.

Readers now are grown wiser, however, than very much to mind us: they want no further telling that one traveller was in pain, and one in love when the tour of Italy was made by them; and so they pick out their intelligence accordingly, from various books, written like two letters in the Tatler, giving an account of a rejoicing night; one endeavouring to excite majestic ideas, the other ludicrous ones of the very same thing.

Well 'tis true enough, however, and has been often enough laughed at, that the Italian horses run without riders, and scamper down a long street with untrimmed heels, hundreds of people hooking them along, as naughty boys do a poor dog, that has a bone tied to his tail in England. This diversion was too good to end with the day.